Outwith
Katie Ailes
‘outwith’: preposition: outside; beyond. A term unique to Scotland.
Revising my visa essay,
applying for three more years
here, I read my own scribbled words:
Comparable opportunities for critical study
do not exist outwith Scotland.
Outwith: a term unfamiliar, yet
scrawled in my own hand,
doubtlessly mine, and I wonder:
I came here all rude American brass, all
trash can, fanny pack, Where’s the castle?
Then Glasgow rolled itself under my tongue,
a grey marble lolling my mouth open with Os:
Glasgow, Kelvingrove, going to Tesco,
then thistling my speech wi sleekit lisps,
wee packets a crisps,
my lips like the lids
of those glass bottles of sand
I used to collect from every beach:
my mouth a shore holding each grain
that altered the flow of my speech,
my pen flowing ‘s’ into the cursive waves
of ‘socialised,’ ‘civilised,’ ‘acclimatised,’
answering Aye! by accident
then smiling.
I may be from out
but I am now with.
